OBAMARAMA

If I was the Clinton campaign, and I was watching as the biggest applause line my main Democratic competitor received every night was his assertion that we must find a solution to a war that “never should have been authorized,” I’d want to do what I could to neutralize that advantage.

If I was sneaky enough, I’d probably try to conflate my candidate’s record with his, and suggest that there is “very little difference” in their Senate voting records on the issue.

If I was truly disingenuous, I might even try to muddy his crystal clear stance on the subject, perhaps by taking comments he made in support of Sen. Kerry and John Edwards back in 2004 out of context to suggest that he hasn’t been opposed to the war from the beginning.

Yes, I suppose if I were desperate enough, I might do these things — though I hope I would have enough scruples to abstain from this sort of political hackery, relying instead on my candidate’s record. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for Mark Penn, Sen. Clinton’s chief strategist. His candidate’s record on the war is proving a major obstacle, and so he has apparently decided that smearing her competitor is a better strategy than debating the issue on the merits.

According to the Washington Post today, Mr. Penn and Obama strategist David Axelrod engaged in a “heated exchange” at a Harvard University forum after Penn distorted Sen. Obama’s statements on the war to suggest that he wasn’t always opposed to its authorization. Axelrod quickly corrected him.

From the article:

“Obama said he didn’t know exactly how he would have voted in Congress because he didn’t have the full intelligence,” Penn said.

Axelrod quickly interrupted Penn and disputed his interpretation of events, charging that the Clinton strategist had distorted the meaning of what Obama had said at the time.

“I really think it is important, if we’re going to run the kind of campaign that will unify our party and move this country forward, that we do it in an honest way and that was not an honest” statement, Axelrod said.

What Sen. Obama actually said in 2004 — while campaigning for the Kerry-Edwards ticket — was that he was not privy to Senate intelligence reports, and therefore that he would not criticize the two Democratic senators’ votes to authorize the war. But in every instance, Sen. Obama noted his own opposition clearly, saying that “What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made” and “I would have voted not to authorize the president, given the facts as I saw them at that time.”

Penn went on to try to conflate Sen. Clinton’s record on the war with Sen. Obama’s, suggesting that their voting records have been “virtually identical,” then went on to claim, as the Post described it, that “the nomination battle should not be decided on the basis of the two senators’ war records.”  I’m sure he’d like that very much, given how Sen. Clinton’s refusal to apologize for her vote is dragging her campaign down further every day.

When Penn’s smoke clears and his mirrors are taken down, the well-established fact that Sen. Obama opposed the authorization of the war consistently and indisputably from the very beginning will remain — as will Sen. Clinton’s vote to authorize the President to invade Iraq.

Unfortunately for Mr. Penn, you can’t unscramble scrambled eggs.